TRI In The News
Raub Offers First Statements in Rutherford Interview
From Lynchburg News and Advance
Original article available here
CHESTERFIELD, Va. --
Detained Marine Corps veteran Brandon J. Raub says the events leading to his confinement in a mental ward this month "made me scared for my country."
Raub, 26, who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, says he was confronted by federal agents and Chesterfield County police this month and tackled before undergoing questioning that led to his confinement in a mental ward.
In an interview released Tuesday with John W. Whitehead, founder of the Charlottesville-based Rutherford Institute, Raub made his first public statements since a judge last week ordered his release, saying there was no basis for his involuntary commitment.
"I'm pretty tough, so I roll with the punches," Raub told Whitehead in a one-on-one interview that aired on the institute's website Tuesday afternoon. "It made me scared for my country; the idea a man can be snatched out of his property without being read his rights should be extremely alarming to all Americans."
Appearing calm and rested, dressed in a shirt and tie, Raub came across far differently than he did in real-time video Aug. 16, when the FBI and Secret Service came to his door in the Bensley community of Chesterfield and began asking about his Facebook postings.
Dressed only in shorts and looking frightened, Raub was shown on the ground and handcuffed in that video, which spread rapidly online.
Raub told Whitehead that Americans need to educate themselves about government intrusions into the lives of citizens, and he urged people to educate themselves, especially regarding the government's ability to seize private property and industry.
Raub said government agents asked him about statements he'd posted on the Internet and he explained that a phrase from a song about sharpening his ax and severing heads was a metaphor for the power of truth.
"I actually had to ask them why they were here," Raub said of his doorstep conversations with federal agents, noting at one point that they took notes about what he was saying.
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Four days after he was taken into custody, on Aug. 20, Raub was ordered by a special justice to be involuntarily committed at the Veterans Affairs medical center in Salem, about 190 miles from his home, after the special justice concluded that he was mentally ill and presented a danger to others.
The involuntary commitment order was backed by mental health evaluations that concluded Raub was paranoid, anxious, agitated and delusional, according to documents in court files.
"Would not offer answers to certain questions" and "client had long pauses before answering questions," a Chesterfield social worker wrote in an evaluation Aug. 16 that was done at the county jail.
"Client has been posting threatening information on the Internet. Client believes that 911 was a conspiracy caused by the U.S.," the assessment reads.
But a Rutherford Institute intern, Lina Ragep, who attended the involuntary commitment hearing Aug. 20 in front of Special Justice Walter Douglas Stokes, said Tuesday in an interview that Raub acted rationally and spoke eloquently about the origin and meaning of the postings and that the medical personnel who had assessed Raub were not available to be cross-examined by Raub's lawyer at the time, James R. Traylor.
The hearing took place at John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell.
"He wasn't handcuffed at the hearing, but they wouldn't let him have a belt. He had to hold his pants up," Ragep said. She said Raub corrected bad information that went to Stokes regarding the origin of some of the comments attributed to him.
"Some of what Brandon supposedly wrote was song lyrics and some was from his brother, not him," Ragep said.
Lawyers representing the Rutherford Institute won Raub's release from the Salem hospital on Friday after a Hopewell circuit judge concluded that a form committing Raub failed to reflect what was wrong with him. None of the boxes on the two-page form signed by Stokes, the special justice, was checked to indicate mental illness and dangerousness, according to a copy of the order in court files.
Efforts to locate Stokes over the past week for comment about the apparent clerical error — by telephone and in visits to his home and office — were unsuccessful. He was appointed in March 2008 to a six-year term as special justice.
In the appeal of the commitment argued by Rutherford lawyers Anthony F. Troy and Brian D. Fowler, the attorneys pointed out numerous procedural failings that allegedly resulted in Raub's illegal detention, both in the Chesterfield jail and at John Randolph Medical Center, where he was sent as part of a temporary detention order.
Hopewell Circuit Judge W. Allan Sharrett said the flawed involuntary commitment order — "devoid of any factual allegations" because of the unmarked boxes — was sufficient to release Raub. There apparently has been no effort to re-commit Raub based on the original findings about his alleged condition.
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In the interview released Tuesday, Raub calmly recalls discovering a mass of law enforcement agents outside his home Aug. 16 and how he was tackled by a Chesterfield police officer, handcuffed and taken to jail. He had been talking with the agents and police for about 25 minutes.
He likened the alleged monitoring of Facebook postings he made to George Orwell's notion of a Ministry of Truth as depicted in the novel "1984." Raub said former President Bill Clinton recently suggested the creation of a Ministry of Truth, just as Orwell imagined.
Raub said in the interview he was asked at one point by a psychiatrist in Salem if he was hearing voices and was told he would be forced to take medications.
Whitehead said in an interview Tuesday that Raub has agreed to proceed with a lawsuit alleging deprivations of his rights and unlawful detention, but the filing is likely several weeks away.
Whitehead said the Internet, Raub's family and Raub's steadfast assertions of innocence all played a role in gaining his freedom. Whitehead said he was alerted to the case by a former client, a soldier, who saw what was happening on the Internet and got in touch with the Rutherford Institute.
When Raub's family and others went to pick him up in Salem, though, Whitehead said there was no record Raub was there. "So one of the veterans at the hospital went upstairs and found him," Whitehead said.
